Scopes & Precedence

Scopes & precedence

Skills resolve across three scopes. On a name conflict, the most authoritative wins:

Scope	Path	Wins conflicts
Enterprise	managed settings	1st; the org’s rules are not optional
Personal	~/.claude/skills/<name>/SKILL.md	2nd; your habits, every project
Project	.claude/skills/<name>/SKILL.md	3rd; committed, the whole team gets it on clone

Plugin skills (Part 4) sit outside this contest entirely: they’re namespaced (plugin-name:skill-name) and never collide.

Live reload rules

• Edits to an existing SKILL.md apply live within the session
• New top-level skill folders need a session restart
• Monorepos: nested .claude/skills/ directories are discovered on demand as the agent works in those paths

Where should a skill live?

• A convention specific to one codebase → project
• Your personal review checklist → personal
• The org’s security rules → enterprise, pushed by admins

Tip

Team sharing inside one repo needs no machinery at all: commit .claude/skills/ to version control. Reach for plugins only when the audience crosses repos.